101 Lecture 19 April 11

Question 1

The Political Calamities of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries.

Answer 1

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Question 2

The Hundred Years War

1337-1453

Causes

Battle for Flanders

Answer 2

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Question 3

Flanders had grown to be the industrial center of northern Europe and had become extremely wealthy through its cloth manufacture.

It could not produce enough wool to satisfy its market and imported fine fleece from England.

Answer 3

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Question 4

England depended upon this trade for its foreign exchange.

During the 1200’s, the upper-class English had adopted Norman fashions and switched from beer to wine.

Answer 4

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Question 5

Note that beer and wine were very important elements in the medieval diet.

Both contain vitamin and yeast complexes that the medieval diet, especially during the winter, did not provide.

Answer 5

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Question 6

the preservation of food was a difficult matter in that era, and the alcohol in beer and wine represented a large number of calories stored in an inexpensive and effective fashion.

People did get drunk during the middle ages, but most could not afford to do so. Beer and wine were valued as food sources and were priced accordingly

Answer 6

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Question 7

England not wine country.

so triangular trade developed.

Wool from England to Flanders
Traded for Flemish cloth
Taken to Southern France
Traded for wine
Brought back to England

Answer 7

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Question 8

counts of Flanders had been vassals of the king of France,

French tried to regain control of the region in order to control its wealth.

The English could not permit this, since it would mean that the French monarch would control their main source of foreign exchange.

Answer 8

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Question 9

A civil war soon broke out in Flanders, with the English supporting the manufacturing middle class and the French supporting the land-owning nobility.

Answer 9

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Question 10

Cause 2

Struggle for Control of France

Answer 10

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Question 11

The English king controlled much of France, particularly in the fertile South.

Answer 11

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Question 12

There was constant bickering along the French-English frontier, and the French kings always had to fear an English invasion from the South. Between Flanders in the North and the English in the South, they were caught in a “nutcracker”.

Answer 12

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Question 13

Cause 3

Alliance with the Scots

French ally with the Scots, perpetual enemies of the English

English now caught in their own nutcracker

Answer 13

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Question 14

French nutcracker would only work if the French could invade England across the English Channel.

Answer 14

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Question 15

England could support their Flemish allies only if they could send aid across the North Sea, and, moreover, English trade was dependent upon the free flow of naval traffic through the Channel.

Answer 15

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Question 16

Cause 4

Battle for Channel and North Sea

French continually tried to gain the upper hand at sea, and the English constantly resisted them. Both sides commissioned what would have been pirates if they had not been operating with royal permission to prey upon each other’s shipping, and there were frequent naval clashes in those constricted waters.

Answer 16

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Question 17

Cause 5

Dynastic Conflict

Charles IV died without a male heir.

But he had a sister, Isabelle, who was married to King Edward II of England

Answer 17

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Question 18

Their son, Edward III, was the grandson of Charles IV’s father, King Philip IV

Legitimate claim to the throne of France

Answer 18

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Question 19

French don’t want an English king.

Going through the male line, get Philip Valois

Becomes Philip VI of France

Answer 19

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Question 20

France was the most populous country in Western Europe (20 million inhabitants to England’s 4-5 million)

and also the wealthiest,

England had a strong central government, many veterans of hard fighting on England’s Welsh and Scottish borders (as well as in Ireland),

a thriving economy, and a popular king.

Edward was disposed to fight France, and his subjects were more than ready to support their young (only 18 years old at the time) king.

Answer 20

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Question 21

Real fighting truly breaks out in 1340.

The war is not one long string of battles.

Lots of truces intervene

Answer 21

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Question 22

Important Results

Brings sense of national identity to both countries

Last hurrah of feudal warfare; development of standing armies

Answer 22

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Question 23

Joan of Arc

Answer 23

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Question 24

This war marked the end of English attempts to control continental territory and the beginning of its emphasis upon maritime supremacy

Answer 24

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Question 25

Revolts

In England: peasant’s revolt

In France: the Jacquerie

Answer 25

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Question 26

The focus on fighting while society as a whole being wracked by various disasters led to massive changes in society.

Answer 26

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Question 27

End to the feudal knight

chivalry grew increasingly costly.

Largesse became more ostentatious and a more important status symbol; many could not afford it.

The fighting aristocracy lost their importance because of gunpowder, infantry formations, and standing armies.

Answer 27

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Question 28

Many noble families were wiped out by the 100 years’ war and the civil wars that followed.

The upper middle class was now buying up land, and there was less wealth in the aristocracy to support a large warrior class.

Answer 28

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Question 29

The kings were less dependent upon the aristocracy for military or bureaucratic services.

The economic recession in many regions impoverished the local aristocracy.

Answer 29

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Question 30

Three classes of aristocrats emerged:

The rich and powerful
The land-hungry and grasping
The small farmers and servants with little wealth or power.

Answer 30

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Question 31

Divisions in the middle class

A cleavage between the greater and lesser guilds took place, and there was sometimes civil war in the medieval towns between the “populo grasso” and “populo minuto.” A gap also emerged between the guild masters and the workers, with the result that an urban proletariat emerged, and the modern division between management and labor was born

Answer 31

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Question 32

Collapse of the Guild System

Economy contracting after 1250

Answer 32

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Question 33

Response by guild masters

to restrict admission to master’s status

to reduce labor costs by cutting salaries of journeymen and extend the years of apprenticeship

to lower working conditions

Answer 33

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Question 34

o reduce civil contributions and charity

to lower purchase price for raw materials

to take over work of smaller gilds

Answer 34

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Question 35

to switch to lower quality, lower cost products

to establish monopoly areas.

Answer 35

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Question 36

After 1350, markets began to grow smaller, and the powerful long-distance merchants had to lower their costs in order to compete.

They did so by producing their own goods, by-passing the gilds

Answer 36

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Question 37

Putting Out System

Merchants’ agents would rent the necessary equipment to peasant families, sell them raw materials, and purchase the finished product.

Basis for industrial manufacturing until 19th c.

Answer 37

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Question 38

Factory system

The merchants would concentrate equipment in a warehouse (“factory”),

acquire raw materials,

hire workers for wages only,

compete rather than co-operate.

This system was used primarily for manufacture consisting of several steps or dealing with heavy materials. It eventually developed into the factory system characteristic of the Industrial Era and which is still prevalent in the post-Industrial age.

Answer 38

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Question 39

The proto-capitalists of the later middle ages did not support civic services, so urban life deteriorated.

The workers’ standard of living dropped, and this reduced their ability to buy the goods they produced.

Answer 39

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Question 40

By the 15th c., this contributed to an economic recession

Answer 40

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Question 41

Production was now uncontrolled, and cycles of inflation and depression became common. More production was moved to the countryside, and wealth concentrated more rapidly in ever-fewer hands.

Answer 41

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Question 42

Effect on the Peasantry

As a result of the recessions, the capitalists began to buy up farmland to produce raw materials for their manufacture (e.g., fields were turned into sheep runs).

Answer 42

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Question 43

A grasping aristocracy began to claim many feudal dues that had long been out of date.

Proprietors fenced in the lands – woods, meadows, ponds –that had once been common property of the peasant communities.

Communities died, and their inhabitants were either forced into the indigent class or became salaried farm workers.

Answer 43

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Question 44

The fluctuations in population brought about by plagues, wars, and famines on the one hand and a high birth rate on the other also affected the structure of rural society.

Land-owners abandoned granting land in exchange for rents and services and turned to employing temporary workers for wages

Answer 44

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Question 45

he emergence of proto-capitalism and other factors in the later Middle Ages created a situation in which wealth concentrated in few and fewer hands. The result was the division of society into a small elite with wealth and power, and a mass of the population with neither.

Answer 45

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Question 46

The social structure of medieval Europe, which had consisted of three great classes distinguished by their social function was changed in basic ways

Answer 46

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Question 47

he classes were now distinguished by their economic power and were two in number – the “haves” and the “have-nots.”

Moreover, the medieval social classes had transcended national boundaries.

The fighting aristocracy of France felt a greater kinship with the fighting aristocracy of England than it did with its own peasant population. This had come to an end, and the population of Europe was divided into competing national groups.

Answer 47

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Question 48

The Great Schism 1378-1415

Avignon Papacy, 1305-1378

Seen as French puppet

Inquisition to silence critics

Loss of moral authority

Answer 48

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Question 49

At the death of Gregory XI in Rome, the cardinals were forced by a Roman mob to elect an Italian pope.

Answer 49

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Question 50

They chose Urban VI in hopes that he would be compliant to their advice. They were mistaken in this hope. Urban decided that both pope and papal administration should resume its residence in Rome, and threatened to reform the college of cardinals to increase Italian representation up to a majority in the body

Answer 50

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Question 51

French cardinals flee Rome

declare Urban invalid as pope

Select a new pope

Answer 51

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Question 52

No one was qualified to judge who was the true pope

Answer 52

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Question 53

There were still two papal claimants, and their rivalry led to increased corruption within their administrations and a decrease of interest in anything other than gaining advantage over their opponent. As time passed, the various reformers managed to settle on common principles and upon the way in which those principles might be put into action. They agreed upon the principle that the sovereignty of the Church rested in a body representative of its members. On this basis, they claimed that a general council would have the power to depose popes and address the other problems facing the church

Answer 53

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Question 54

Council of Pisa deposes both popes

neither one sees themselves as deposed

both excommunicate the council

Answer 54

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Question 55

It was clear to the Conciliarists that they would need organized secular force and the threat of withholding papal taxes and renders if they were to accomplish their aims. By 1415, the problems raised by the triple popes, Czech (Hussite) heresy and revolt, Church corruption, and popular concern had become so pressing that the Holy Roman Emperor threw his support behind the Conciliarists and arranged for a new council to meet at the imperial city of Constance.

Answer 55

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